I’ve dabbled a bit with using Ardour and FOSS synthesizer plugins lately. I’m no expert, have only ever been in the dabble stage (played around with FL studio 6 when I was a kid). But I have gotten the urge to try to use a hardware synthesizer after watching a youtube video of using an old DAW on an Atari to control a budget 80s synth. (Video for those interrested).

I like the idea of being limited to a certain set of hardware, as it can get the creative juices flowing, when I have a limited set of knobs to turn for example, to get the most out of it. So I’ve impulse-ordered a second hand Roland SH-32 desktop synth (still waiting for it to arrive), that I should in theory be able to have 4 instruments at the same time from what I’ve understood.

Does anyone here have experience setting up hardware synths with a DAW on linux? I have an audio interface with MIDI in and out, so I should be able to connect it to a DAW in theory. Wondering if it is possible for the DAW to set up the correct settings on the synth through MIDI, when I open the project in the DAW.

I know I’m a bit early to ask since I haven’t even gotten the hardware yet 😅. But I’m exited to try something new 🙂

  • Primeval Mudd@waveform.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Hi,

    I watched that video a few days back and drowned in nostalgia, though I was an Amiga chap rather than an ST one.

    Has the SH-32 arrived yet?

    I’ve had a look at Chapter 8 of the manual, Using the SH-32 with External MIDI Devices, the MIDI Implementation sheet1 and the Sound On Sound review: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/roland-sh32

    Per the Sound On Sound review:

    Real-Time Control Over MIDI

    The SH32 transmits much of its control panel information in real time, and you can select whether it does so using MIDI continuous controllers or SysEx messages. You can even allocate an ID to the unit so that, if you have multiple SH32s, you can control each of them separately. This is excellent, and allows you to record knob twiddles and other changes in real time, and then recreate the performances using an external sequencer.

    Given the amount of information that can be sent from/received by the SH-32 it could take a lot of setting up in the DAW but there doesn’t seem to be much that the DAW couldn’t control.

    1 They’re both available on the Roland website: https://www.roland.com/uk/support/by_product/sh-32/owners_manuals/

    • noddy@beehaw.org
      OPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Hi. Thanks for the response. Video is a great watch yes :) I was impressed by what he was able to do with limited hardware and software, and wanted to try playing with midi stuff myself.

      I just got the synth yesterday. I’ve been playing around with it a bit with a single channel. It was fun to have physical controls for changing oscillators and filters, etc. Haven’t read a lot in the manual yet. I managed to update the firmware to the latest version. This was done by booting the synth in a firmware upgrade mode, then playing a bunch of midi files to the input port. Was a bit cumbersome but now it is on the latest firmware at least.

      Seems like the synth is quite flexible yes. Currently I’m looking for a way to play on different midi channels with software. I tried to create one track per midi channel in ardour, but I’m struggling to map my input to the correct midi channels. I haven’t found a way yet in ardour. Seems like it always outputs to the same midi channel no matter what I configure.

      I think I’ll have to worry about advanced stuff like the controls you quoted from the manual later. First I just want to set up stuff so I can play on different midi channels.

      EDIT: I figured out the midi channel issue. Ardour was not the problem. The synth was configured to play all the instruments at the same time. For some reason this is possible even if I’ve explicitly configured different midi channel for each of the instruments. After I selected a single instrument they operated separately. Just figuring out some quirks of my synth.